I started the blog Bureaucracy for Breakfast in 2010, and it was a comedic look at unemployment, the economic divide, and the lifestyles of the 1%. It was featured on Marketplace on NPR, AOL News, Huffington Post, and Chelsea Handler’s Borderline Amazing Comedy. I have been interviewed by ABC 20/20 for a segment about the Rich Kids of Instagram, and in addition to writing about Hollywood, celebrity, and excess for Forbes I write about pop culture and entertainment for The Hairpin, Bustle, Salon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Billfold. My first book, BROKENOMICS, is coming from Seal Press April 2015. You can find me on Twitter @TheElf26.

A Celebrity Trend Gone Wild: Pressed Juice

A healthy diet doesn’t come cheap, unless you’re fine and dandy existing on beans and rice 365 days a year or you have a beautiful garden full of kale and spinach. Snacking on chia seed pudding and coconut water makes sense for some people, but most of us don’t have the time or the extra funds to eat so clean.

Celebrities are all about eating clean, and the whole pressed juice trend that has been bombarding our cities and towns for the last year or so has a lot of people bouncing out of their Barre Method classes clutching some pretty pricey concoctions. What is it with pressed juice? What happened to the plain old juicing of the recent past? Are we doomed if we don’t drink it?

People used to think of Sunny Delight and Tang as healthy juices. Times have changed for the better and we moved on to Odwalla and invested in our very own juicers. How can you get any healthier than stuffing carrots, beets, and celery through your juicer at home and gulping down the magenta liquid that pours out? Sure it’s annoying to clean all that slimy pulp but it’s worth it. Your skin gets all glowy and your wallet doesn’t suffer.

Smoothie places like Jamba Juice feel so passé these days – celebs love being photographed with their hair thrown into a messy bun and their hands overflowing with coffee, cell phone, teeny fluffy dog, car keys, and whatever else makes their lives look hectic and busy, but you don’t really see them clutching a gigantic Jamba Juice. Too suburban maybe. Now their oh-so busy lives require pressed juice. They wax poetic about how amazing the stuff is – mainly so the rest of us will run out and buy one.

Supposedly pressed juice is raw, minimally processed, and holds more vitamins than normal juice. But really – how many vitamins die a quiet death at the hands of a plain old juicer? Is there a Vitamin C genocide going on that we don’t know about? Everyone from Nicole Richie to Demi Moore to the super trendy site Hello Giggles have talked up the trend, making it sound like sipping on kale and almond milk with your besties is something every single person should experience. What they leave out is that these magical juices can cost upwards of nine bucks a pop. To some that’s nothing. To a lot of us, the memory of four or five dollar juices is still fresh in our minds. Nine dollars? Admittedly it’s kind of ridiculous to think nothing of paying nine dollars for a glass of wine and getting irate when thinking of spending the same amount for something so miraculously healthy. But really – it’s a bunch of vegetables.

One place where things like pricey pressed juice is the norm is Abbot Kinney in Venice, California. It’s a trendy street that’s like the shabby chic, cool Rodeo Drive. It’s couture in disguise. The stores and restaurants look like any old civilian could waltz in and pick up a maxi dress or a pair of white sneakers, but unless you’re an heiress or the kind of person who has pressed juice delivered to your doorstep, the price tags might give you a heart condition that no amount of pressed juice could cure. Pressed juice makes perfect sense in the economic bubble of Abbot Kinney. In line at the Intelligentsia Coffee, you can overhear the grungy elite enticing their uninitiated friends with lines like: “It’s not just a coffee shop. It’s an experience.” These people probably say the same of pressed juice.

Sure, paying that much for juice is of no consequence to some people and they can shoot all the wheatgrass their healthy heart desires. But just because some celebrity says it’s the end all be all doesn’t mean we have to follow the herd. It’s a trend, like Zooey Deschanel’s bangs or Kim Kardashian’s wedding. It’ll pass. You’ll probably save a chunk of money waiting for the next big thing.

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